Stories of Black and Indigenous patriots come into focus as US remembers the American Revolution

Revolutionary War re-enactor Charles Price, 95, who for decades portrayed enslaved Minuteman Prince Estabrook, poses for a portrait near the Minute Man statue, Monday, April 13, 2026, in Lexington, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) 2026-04-18T04:05:21Z LEXINGTON, Mass. (AP) — Charlie Price says he didn’t learn much about the American Revolution in school. He knew about George Washington , the Battle of Bunker Hill and that the patriots won. It wasn’t until he joined the Lexington Minutemen — a group of Revolutionary War reenactors — that he realized there’s so much more to the story. The Lexington Minutemen are marking the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington in Massachusetts on Saturday, as they do every year, and among the soldiers represented will be Prince Estabrook, an enslaved man who joined his white neighbors on Lexington Green in April 19, 1775, as British troops approached. He was wounded that day but went on to serve in multiple deployments throughout the war. “I wasn’t surprised that we didn’t know about it,” said Price, a 95-year-old Black Korean War veteran who played the role of Estabrook for 50 years. “I was surprised that there was one Black soldier out here.” As America prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, Estabrook and other patriots of color are being celebrated through programs nationwide that aim to tell a more complete story of the birth of the nation. Telling the whole story Museum exhibits, documentary films and lectures have traditionally focused on the white leaders of the American Revolution , such as Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere. Christopher Brown, a British Empire historian at Columbia University, said the Revolution has long been portrayed as a “simple story and a moral story that celebrates American origins and that looks to the American past in a kind of idealized version of what the present is.” But in recent decades, “a more accurate view of the past” has emerged that showcases the diverse collection of men and women who played critical roles in the fight for freedom. “There were Black men in the ranks who were fighting in Concord and Lexington and fought on Bunker Hill,” he said. “They knew all of the work that women were doing to support the revolutionary effort. The fact that we didn’t know that is more of a sign of our lack of curiosity and the need for greater research.” (